


One of You and One of Me

by HopefulNebula



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-23
Updated: 2008-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:04:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HopefulNebula/pseuds/HopefulNebula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"And when we do find each other again, we'll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart."</p>
            </blockquote>





	One of You and One of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Fizza

 

 

When Will Parry died, he didn't go about it the same way as most people. He didn't fight, didn't try to convince himself he wasn't dead, didn't call out for Kirjava or any of the people he knew in life. Instead, he comforted a little girl he found alone on the path, taking her hand and explaining what was to come for both of them. When the two of them met the boatsman, Will introduced him to the girl and greeted him as an old friend. As they reached the gates, Will told the child -- a girl from his own world named Sarah -- to be brave, that the harpies just wanted to hear true stories, and although they looked scary, there was nothing to fear from them if she could give them truth. She trembled anyway as the gates opened.

The atmosphere in the world of the dead surprised Will. The landscape itself hadn't changed that he could see, but the mood of the ghosts had changed profoundly. The world he was in was no longer a place of nothing now that the harpies had a purpose. There were just as many ghosts there now as there had been sixty-three years ago, but they were sharing a sense of anticipation and not longing. They congregated in groups of about twenty, already sharing stories of their lives as they waited for the harpies to listen. A stream of ghosts flowed uphill to where Will knew the window lay.

Before Will and Sarah could join one of these groups, they heard a voice above them.

"Will Parry?" As soon as the sound of the name hit the ground, a flurry of whispers took over the waiting ghosts. Evidently he was famous here.

"Yes, Gracious Wings. It's me."

"You have proven yourself already; we don't need stories from you. You can follow the others to the window," she said, and Will wondered at the change in her voice. Where her voice had been harsh, it was now soft and full of energy. Guiding the dead had been good for her, it seemed.

"Has Lyra been here yet?"

"Not yet. She is still alive."

"Then I'd like to wait here and meet with her when she arrives, if you don't mind. I can help you guide the other ghosts, if you like."

Gracious Wings closed her eyes. Will took the harpy's moment of thought to whisper to Sarah that it was okay, that this harpy had saved his friend's life a long time ago. Sarah's grip on Will's leg relaxed slightly.

"You may stay," Gracious Wings replied, "and you may leave whenever you wish. This world still owes you a great debt, Will Parry. Your help, of course, would be appreciated. If you help the people by the gate, you will be most likely to see Lyra early when she comes." Will nodded. "Now, who is your friend here?"

"M- my name is Sarah," the girl stuttered. "I'm eight and a half and I just died of leukemia."

"How you died isn't usually important," Gracious Wings said, landing at the girl's eye level. Will wondered at the further level of softness her voice had gained. It was hard to believe that the harpy who had attacked Lyra so long ago was the same one speaking in the comforting tone he was hearing now. "What matters is how you _lived_. Tell me what happened in your life, child."

Sarah took a moment to steel herself and get her thoughts together. At first, her speech was tentative: "Well, before I got sick, I used to play football with my brothers and their friends. I was smaller than all of them but they loved having me as goalkeeper 'cause I could stop just about anything. We played every day in the summer at the park near our house..."

Will smiled. Sarah seemed to have forgotten where she was, and her speech was ebullient now, and judging from the look of approval on Gracious Wings' face, she was going to be just fine.

\-----

Will didn't know how long he had spent at the gate coaching the newly dead in what to expect during their final journey; time was fluid in this world, after all, and there were no days or nights to count, at any rate. All the time he had spent faded away in an instant when he saw a flash of hair that had once been dirty blonde out of the corner of his eye.

He ran to meet her, and she saw him coming from about thirty yards. For the longest time, they didn't speak, content to hold one another once again. It was Will who spoke first.

"I missed you so much, Lyra. So very much."

"Oh, I missed you too, Will. There's so much that's happened, and some of the time I'd stop and realize how much I wanted to share it with you, and there were some other days I didn't think of you at all and felt guilty when I realized it, but I never missed a Midsummer's Day, not ever, and-- Well, we've got time now, don't we?"

"We do. Let's find someplace to talk."

Will and Lyra drifted through the clusters of waiting ghosts to the spot where they had plotted their escape the last time they were in this world. A harpy perched above them, smiling and listening to the pair as she watched over the others.

"I didn't know what to do with myself after... well, after," Lyra told Will. "But then Dame Hannah offered me a place at a boarding school that was part of St. Sophia's. She and I had special lessons where we studied the alethiometer together for years, and I never did get quite as good as I used to be, but what I had was so much stronger." Lyra was talking like the child she used to be, though she was her ghostly face was full of lines now. "I ended up getting my Masters' degree in Economic History so I could earn a living and so I'd have an excuse to visit the North -- my dissertation was on trade patterns in the Arctic -- and I hope teaching helped me to get people thinking about the world. Oh, Will, it's been so long. What happened to you, and your mother? And Mary?"

"Mrs. Cooper sent Mum to the authorities after she saw my picture in the papers. I can't really blame her -- she had no idea what was going on, and she had to look out for herself -- but she was so glad to hear about my father. They ended up ruling the robber's death an accident once I was there to testify, but of course I couldn't tell the courts the whole story. I told them about looking for the letters, and that after I killed the man, I'd run away and been in hiding because I was afraid of what would happen to me, and Mary was able to convince them she'd destroyed the equipment because the man who worked there was going to sell it to an industrial spy. And that was actually pretty close to the truth, so things could have been a lot worse. Anyway, Mary wrote a lot of papers on dark matter and its effects on regular matter. Won a few prizes for it, too." And now _he_ was going on like he was thirteen. "I went back to school. I even made a few friends. I ended up studying geology..."

They continued talking for a very long time. Hundreds of ghosts passed, wondering at the sight of two of their own sitting so contentedly together. Once there was nothing more to say, they smiled at one another and, hands still clasped, joined the other ghosts in their final procession.

They spent just enough time outside the window to notice how much the trees had grown before dissolving in unison into the atmosphere around them.

 


End file.
